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ZFS versus XFS with Bonnie++ patched to use random data

I’ve patched Bonnie++ (( it’s not ready for production use as it isn’t controlled by a command line switch and relies on /dev/urandom existing )) to use a block of data from /dev/urandom instead of all 0’s for its block write tests. The intention is to see how the file systems react to less predictable data and to remove the unfair advantage that ZFS has with compression (( yes, I’m going to send the patch to Russell to look at )).

Pretty conclusive win for XFS at the moment, though ZFS is still better for file creation and deletion (with the exception of sequential deletes) and it is really early days for ZFS so plenty of room for manoeuvre yet.